Viewpoint: The Practice Visit - An Obituary.

Abstract

I was introduced to practice visits 25 years ago under the auspices of the ‘What Sort of Doctor’ scheme (colloquially ‘Whatsod’). These were peer-to-peer visits to practices and at their heart was a friendly but challenging discussion about what practices were actually doing to deliver good care, and how they might do it better. Their strength was that they were carried out by fellow GPs who knew that general practice is a difficult balance between efficiency and personal patient care. In the 1990s I visited each of 51 practices in and around St Helens in north west England. My central question was, ‘Would I want them to care for my mother?’ Some failed. But as I waited in some scruffy waiting rooms I frequently saw rather muddled patients coming to reception desks to be greeted by name. They were then helped to navigate …